Retribution swings a two-hander, but in Forever most of its damage is Holy and grows with spell damage. Seal of Righteousness adds Holy damage to every swing, Judgement releases it every 8 seconds without touching the global cooldown, and Consecration and Holy Strike fill the gaps. The new talent Twist of Light makes seal twisting a rotation: put up Seal of Command before one swing and Righteousness before the next, and each swing carries both. On a one-minute single-boss fight the build does 982.0 DPS, 4th of 25 damage specs.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

• Packs of bosses. Consecration's full damage reaches the first four enemies in it, and Hammer of the Righteous hits four at once. On a three-minute fight against three bosses Retribution ranks 2nd of 25, and Consecration alone is 31.7 % of its damage. The Rotation page has a caveat on the Hammer.
• Every fight length. No long cooldown decides the result, so the build ranks 4th on one minute and 4th on three.
• Buffs for the whole raid. Greater Blessings and Judgements reach every class. The last table on this page prices each one.

Weaknesses

• Mana on long fights. Holy Conduit only cuts mana costs, yet it is worth 3.8 % of your damage on three minutes and 0.0 % on one.
• A full global cooldown. Twisting puts a seal on the global cooldown before almost every swing: about 10.9 Seals of Command and 10.7 Seals of Righteousness a minute on three minutes.
• Another paladin's Judgement. You judge Righteousness or Command. Judgement of the Crusader, which raises the Holy damage the boss takes, comes from another paladin, and Retribution is one of only three damage specs it helps.

On every fight

Retribution barely moves with fight length: the one-minute build keeps Seal of Righteousness up instead of twisting, and lands in the same place. Three bosses lift it through Consecration and Hammer of the Righteous. Pick a fight below and every page follows.

Races

Only Humans, Dwarves and Undead can be paladins in Forever. For the Alliance, Human leads every fight. Sword Specialization is 2 % crit with all spells and attacks while you hold a sword, and the Human set's Blade of Hanna is a two-handed sword. It switches off for the 30 seconds you hold the Manual Crowd Pummeler, which is a mace. Dwarves trail: their Mace Specialization needs a mace, and every set's fast two-hander is a sword.

For the Horde, Undead are the only paladins. Touch of the Grave gives each landed attack or spell a 5 % chance to drain 5 % of your maximum health from the boss as Shadow damage: 1.2 % of an Undead paladin's damage on two minutes. There both factions play the same build and the two races finish within about 2 DPS of each other.

What a Paladin brings to the raid

A paladin adds the Greater Blessings and the three Judgements. Every benchmark build has them all, so the table prices each one for the damage specs it helps on this fight. Retribution Aura shows nothing: only the tank is struck, so it only deals damage in the tank's party.

Changes

The build's score on this fight after each simulator or game-data update. The Updates page explains each one.